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"Hard" Sciences Finally Catch Up to Social Sciences…

…In figuring out that IQ is a bullshit theory. After all, critical leftists have been pointing out that a standardized test designed to reveal a concrete and universal intelligence quotient was about as "scientific" as phrenology and other para-sciences for decades. One almost wonders why it took so long for neuro-scientists to discover what we had already proven without a laboratory and brain-scanners: that there is no such thing as an "intelligence quotient" and that there can be no objective measurement of intelligence unaffected by the conflict of social classes.

Not that a bunch of brain-scans are capable of explaining how intelligence is also a social phenomena, not something simply found in the brain, but at least they can tell us that all of this IQ nonsense is a just that––nonsense––because, lacking an understanding of the social aspect of intelligence, it also lacks any basis in crude biology. There is nothing in the brain that can be measured as an "intelligence quotient" and, as the senior researcher of this study that has once again disproved IQ says: "the bottom line is the whole concept of IQ––or you having a higher IQ than me––is a myth." This from a neuro-scientist who probably doesn't care about the reasons why the social sciences have debunked IQ. (Now, if only wikipedia would preface its entry about "intelligence quotient" in the same way it prefaces its entries on other crack sciences. Unfortunately, it still claims that "[w]ell-constructed IQ tests are generally accepted as an accurate measure of intelligence by the scientific community." Not anymore!)

The heavy investment of some people in the concept of IQ was always dubious. When a given person's knowledge is overdetermined by the education s/he receives from infancy, and if this person is born into a poor family without access to the same pedagogical opportunities as someone in a far more economically privileged family, a standardized testing to measure peoples' "braininess" should have been dismissed as unscientific from the get-go. And when such tests attempt to avoid this supposed problem of educational accessibility by imagining an equal playing field of IQ, they still ended up producing cultural/linguistic errors that reified the normative culture as the standard of intelligence. And then attempting to merge all of this with pattern recognition, as if all of these things were the same single field of "intelligence" existing somewhere in the mind and thus dooming dyslexics to low scores, these tests were always something of a mess.

You know, I was never subjected to an IQ test but I knew a few people who were––in fact, I know someone who supposedly received a 150 on his test but never ended up becoming the next Einstein or renaissance man. In fact, I suspect that if I was tested I would have scored pretty low because of my learning disability that, at the point when such testing would happen, had caused at least one chauvinist teachers to call me "retarded". I also suspect there are people who would have tested low and who could have become Shakespeares and Einsteins if they had been given different opportunities.

Now even neuro-science tells us the bell-curve is bullshit.

So thankfully, we have this new study that argues for the utter uselessness of imagining that there can be a single "quotient" that can be measured and called "intelligence" existing anywhere in the human brain. And though it is true that the mind-brain problem is still a significant philosophical issue for some people, those who would like to defend the supposed "scientific" veracity of IQ by stating that the "mind" is separate from the "brain" have left the realm of science. When it comes to intelligence and mind, after all, the only "hard science" capable of measuring something like this would have to be neuro-science.

The problem with pseudo-sciences is that they take a while to vanish. Since this recent study, coming as it does from the so-called "hard sciences", is the figurative kill shot to theories of a single "intelligence quotient" that can be accurately measured, the death throes will probably stretch over a decade. It really is too bad that the social sciences couldn't have killed this theory off––unfortunately, people seem to think that neuro-science possesses more authority than critical sociology in this area.

Now if only some evolutionary biologists could release a study saying "evolutionary psychology" is a myth and also catch up to the critical social scientists.

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I'm afraid that IQ is still with us. So far from it being rejected, even the supposedly critical viewpoints assume that there is something validly measured. For instance, Keith Stanovich's What Intelligence Tests Miss assumes that IQ tests are valid but that intelligence and rationality are not the same thing!

In a different context, Steven Pinker flatly declares IQ is valid and tells his readers how much is heritable. Now, regardless of what you think of Pinker as a human being, there's no denying that he is extremely influential in what you might call the middle brow followers of science, the ones who are willing to tackle lots of text but not too much math or detail about experiments/studies.

And as for evolutionary psychology being openly avowed as a pseudoscience, evolutionary psychology is directly aimed at the Standard Social Science Model. (Yes, they capitalize the letters.) The rest of us think of this "model" as the basic scientific approach to the study of society pioneered by the Enlightenment thinkers. This project is vastly too dear to the bourgoisie. There's a reason why Charles Simonyi endowed Richard Dawkins' chair.

By the way, I found your old post on what science is, and found it a formulation deepening my own understanding. (At least I imagine so.)

Well yes it is still with us: the results of this neuro-scientific experiment are relatively recent (they were only announced in the past two weeks) and, as I noted in my last substantial paragraph, it's going to take decades for people to abandon the notion altogether. And even then I was being hopeful: chances are, versions of it will still be embraced––maybe a new concept of IQ that takes this recent research into account will emerge. In other words, about 60-70% of this post was strident (meaning I really need to start qualifying what posts are more serious than others) and more amused by the fact that this study was "big news" when critical leftist sociologists (not the critical viewpoints that assume it can still be measured, but leftist social scientists) have been complaining about IQ for years.

Also, the comment about evolutionary psychology being openly [dis]avowed as pseudoscience was more of a throwaway line to yet again note my annoyance/disgust with evo-psych.

The manner in with normative thought construes heterogeneity with hierarchy carries over on more levels than just IQ. This is off topic, but the same could be said of animal rights. There is, after all, no objective basis by which we can say that we are better, smarter, or more capable than other species (just better suited to different tasks and with differing levels of impact).

There probably is a speck of truth to evolutionary psychology, but the manner in which it is approached is usually backwards. People often assume that because certain behaviors and psychological characteristics evolve over time that they are fixed. Actually, this indicates the opposite: biologically-ingrained behaviors and psychological traits are adaptable and change over time according to their environment. As opposed to most meat heads which uphold evolutionary psychology (usually people who fancy themselves and society at large as a Neanderthals with cellphones- talk about projection!), the notion actually reaffirms historical materialism.

Likewise, most psychology and sociology is rubbish and "apologia for capitalism." Today, they mainly exist to define normal and abnormal, not to explain anything, and as such could not even be defined as "soft" sciences.

Great points! The only intervention I would make is simply to point out that, while you are quite right in pointing out that there is something historically materialist about psychology/mind/brain evolving, evo-psych as a discourse is not defined primarily as you put it but is usually based in some sort of dubious biological determinism (i.e. like 90% of the articles in Psychology Today).

Good stuff. I feel that the left took a serious blow with the death of Stephen Jay Gould. He was shredding both IQ testing and evolutionary psychology 20 years ago, using both the "hard" sciences and the social sciences. In an age of pop science reductionism, we could really use more openly Marxist scientists.